Amazon Web Services,incl. EC2

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing you to quickly scale capacity. The full AWS suite is also available from SoftwareONE under this service

You can sign in to the Support Center at https://console.aws.amazon.com/support/home#/ by using the email address and password associated with your AWS account. To log in with other credentials, see Accessing AWS Support.

Onboarding and offboarding

Onboarding and offboarding

Getting started

AWS provides a range of resources to help customers get started on our services. These include: comprehensive documentation (in multiple formats), introductory videos, hands-on labs, online and in-person training, access to a large ecosystem of partners and support from the public sector account team.

Service documentation

Yes

Documentation formats

HTML

PDF

Other

Other documentation formats

Kindle

End-of-contract data extraction

Data may be copied out using OS-level tools (such as xopy or rsync)

End-of-contract process

Buyer may terminate the relationship with Supplier for any reason by (i) providing Supplier with notice and (ii) closing Buyers account for all services for which Supplier provide an account closing mechanism.

Buyers pay for the services they use to the point of account termination. Please see the AWS UK G-Cloud 9 Pricing Document affiliated with this Service in the Digital Marketplace.

Using the service

Using the service

Web browser interface

Yes

Using the web interface

Almost all functionality for each of our services is exposed through the web console.

The web console facilitates management for all aspects of the AWS account in a consolidated view whilst providing access to all services and their respective functionalities.

In some cases, specific configuration parameters of a service are dedicated to, and only available from, the CLI, SDK, or API interface.

Web interface accessibility standard

None or don’t know

How the web interface is accessible

You can sign in to the Support Center at https://console.aws.amazon.com/support/home#/ by using the email address and password associated with your AWS account. To log in with other credentials, see Accessing AWS Support.

Web interface accessibility testing

N/A

API

Yes

What users can and can't do using the API

All functionality is exposed via an API.

API automation tools

Ansible

Chef

SaltStack

Terraform

Puppet

API documentation

Yes

API documentation formats

HTML

PDF

Other

Command line interface

Yes

Command line interface compatibility

Linux or Unix

Windows

MacOS

Using the command line interface

All functionality is available via the CLI.

Scaling

Scaling

Scaling available

Yes

Scaling type

Automatic

Independence of resources

Customer environments are logically segregated to prevent users and customers from accessing resources not assigned to them.

AWS continuously monitors service usage to project infrastructure needs to support availability commitments/requirements. AWS maintains a capacity planning model to assess infrastructure usage and demands at least monthly, and usually more frequently. In addition, the AWS capacity planning model supports the planning of future demands to acquire and implement additional resources based upon current resources and forecasted requirements.

AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud; customers are responsible for security in the cloud. AWS enables customers to control their content (where it will be stored, how it will be secured in transit or at rest, how access to their AWS environment will be managed).

Users can recover backups themselves, for example through a web interface

Data-in-transit protection

Data-in-transit protection

Data protection between buyer and supplier networks

Private network or public sector network

TLS (version 1.2 or above)

IPsec or TLS VPN gateway

Other

Other protection between networks

Network devices, including firewall and other boundary devices, are in place to monitor and control communications at the external boundary of the network and at key internal boundaries within the network. These boundary devices employ rule sets, access control lists (ACL), and configurations to enforce the flow of information to specific information system services.

ACLs, or traffic flow policies, are established on each managed interface, which manage and enforce the flow of traffic. ACL policies are approved by Amazon Information Security.

Data protection within supplier network

Other

Other protection within supplier network

Customer environments are logically segregated to prevent users and customers from accessing resources not assigned to them. AWS gives customers ownership and control over their content by design through simple, but powerful tools that allow customers to determine how their content will be secured in transit.AWS enables customers to open a secure, encrypted channel to AWS services using TLS/SSL, and/or IPsec or TLS VPN (if applicable), or other means of protection the customer wish to use.API calls can be encrypted with TLS/SSL to maintain confidentiality; the AWS Console connection is encrypted with TLS.

Availability and resilience

Availability and resilience

Guaranteed availability

AWS currently provides SLAs for several services. Due to the rapidly evolving nature of AWS’s product offerings, SLAs are best reviewed directly on our website via the links below:

Well-architected solutions on AWS that leverage AWS Service SLA’s and unique AWS capabilities such as multiple Availability Zones, can ease the burden of achieving specific SLA requirements.

Approach to resilience

The AWS Business Continuity plan details the process that AWS follows in the case of an outage, from detection to deactivation. AWS has developed a three-phased approach: Activation and Notification Phase, Recovery Phase, and Reconstitution Phase. This approach ensures that AWS performs system recovery and reconstitution efforts in a methodical sequence, maximizing the effectiveness of the recovery and reconstitution efforts and minimizing system outage time due to errors and omissions.

AWS maintains a ubiquitous security control environment across all regions. Each data centre is built to physical, environmental, and security standards in an active-active configuration, employing an n+1 redundancy model, ensuring system availability in the event of component failure. Components (N) have at least one independent backup component. All data centres are online and serving traffic. In case of failure, there is sufficient capacity to enable traffic to be load-balanced to the remaining sites.

Customers are responsible for implementing contingency planning, training and testing for their systems hosted on AWS. AWS provides customers with the capability to implement a robust continuity plan, including the utilization of frequent server instance back-ups, data redundancy replication, and the flexibility to place instances and store data within multiple geographic regions across multiple Availability Zones.

API calls to launch/terminate instances, change firewalls, and perform other functions are signed by customers’ Amazon Secret Access Key (either the root AWS Account’s Secret Access Key or the Secret Access key of a user created with AWS IAM). Amazon EC2 API calls cannot be made on customers’ behalf without access to customers’ Secret Access Ke.

API calls can be encrypted with TLS/SSL for confidentiality and customers can use TLS/SSL-protected API endpoints.

Employees maintain policies in a centralised and accessible location. AWS Security Assurance is responsible for familiarizing employees with the AWS security policies.

AWS has established information security functions that are aligned with defined structure, reporting lines, and responsibilities. Leadership involvement provides clear direction and visible support for security initiatives.

The output of AWS Leadership reviews include any decisions or actions related to:

• Improvement of the effectiveness of the ISMS. • Update of the risk assessment and treatment plan.• Modification of procedures and controls that affect information security to respond to internal or external events that may impact the ISMS. • Resource needs. • Improvement in how the effectiveness of controls is measured.

Policies are approved by AWS leadership at least annually or following a significant change to the AWS environment.

Operational security

Operational security

Configuration and change management standard

Supplier-defined controls

Configuration and change management approach

Changes to AWS services and features follow secure software development practices, including security risk reviews prior to launch. Developer access to production environments is via explicit access system requests, subject to owner review and authorisation.

To ensure the effectiveness of the AWS Incident Management plan, AWS conducts incident response testing, providing excellent coverage for the discovery of defects and failure modes as well as testing the systems for potential customer impact.

The Incident Response Test Plan is executed annually, in conjunction with the Incident Response plan. It includes multiple scenarios, potential vectors of attack, the inclusion of the systems integrator in reporting and coordination and varying reporting/detection avenues.

Different instances running on the same physical machine are isolated from each other via the Xen hypervisor. The Amazon EC2 firewall resides within the hypervisor layer, between the physical network interface and the instance's virtual interface. All packets pass through this layer. The physical random-access memory (RAM) is separated using similar mechanisms.